The sport of shooting currently enjoys widespread popularity and has become a highly competitive sport in which a shooter must be capable of sustaining a high level of skill and accuracy to prevail in competition. The sport of archery, in particular, has enjoyed an increase in popularity. Archery today, however, is no longer limited to the stationary types of targets commonly associated with the sport. Rather, contemporary archers shoot at flying targets, both in competition and in hunting. Skill and accuracy can only be developed by repeated practice shooting at the kinds of targets employed in shooting competitions. The kinds of shooting competitions which require the shooter to hit a moving target are particularly difficult to practice for unless the shooter has a contingent of other people to call on to throw targets for him or her to shoot at. The shooting enthusiast who wants to develop accuracy in hitting moving targets to increase his or her hunting skills also shares this problem.
Devices designed to launch automatically targets for shooting are available. However, these devices are directed almost universally to the sport of skeet or trap shooting and are exclusively for gun shooters rather than archers. In this sport, a disc-like clay "pigeon" target is launched, generally from a small building, along a trajectory which is essentially horizontal with respect to the ground. U.S. Pat. No. 3,923,033 to LaPorte et al discloses such a target-throwing device. The target-throwing device of this patent includes structure for automatically feeding a target to a single throwing arm, for releasing the arm to throw the target and for then returning the throwing arm to a cocked position ready to receive another target. The cycle is activated by a switch, which must be manually operated to start the cycle and release a target. There is no suggestion in this reference that the target thrower disclosed therein could be modified to obtain the automatic sequential release of a plurality of targets at controlled, predetermined intervals. Neither is there any suggestion that more than one throwing arm could be employed to release a plurality of targets. Moreover, the single arm type of target thrower disclosed in the LaPorte et al patent can throw only a single target unless provided with a separate gravity feed mechanism such as that shown therein and thus does not easily provide a shooter with the sustained supply of moving targets required to enhance shooting skill.
The prior art does disclose, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,739,373, an automatic target release system whereby a "clay pigeon" or similar target is released at a predetermined time interval following the provision of a signal to the shooter. The actuation of the system must be accomplished manually, preferably by the person designated scorekeeper in the shooting competition, each time a target is to be released. The target release system disclosed in this reference employs a timing system which is designed to provide a single signal and releases only a single target each time the system is manually activated. There is no teaching in this patent that the timer control disclosed therein could be employed to effect the automatic sequential release of a plurality of targets from more than one throwing arm at predetermined intervals.
Other devices for activating target release systems are disclosed in the prior art. Those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,568,199 and 3,770,981 are exemplary of remotely controlled systems designed to be used with skeet or trap shooting machines. However, neither of the systems described in these patents provides for the automatic, sequential release of a plurality of targets at predetermined intervals.
The target release devices disclosed by the prior art do not address an additional problem encountered by the shooting enthusiast who is not interested in trap or skeet shooting. The shooter who does not want to be limited either to shooting at skeet targets or to the rules and regulations of skeet shooting, but wants simply to go out in the fields and practice shooting at other types of targets moving along varied trajectories cannot use the kinds of target throwers disclosed by the prior art for this purpose. Aside from the great weight and bulk of the prior art target throwers, the complexity of these devices renders their use by the non-professional shooter both difficult and prohibitively expensive. Moreover, the available throwers are not only easily transported from one place to another, but are also not readily adjustable to vary the trajectory of flight path of the target. Finally, the prior art target throwers are designed exclusively to throw targets for shooters who use guns. These target throwers are essentially useless for archers who want to enhance their skill and accuracy shooting a moving target with a bow and arrow.
Consequently, the prior art has filed to disclose a target throwing device suitable for use by either archers or both gun and bow and arrow shooting enthusiasts which is sufficiently portable to permit it to be readily transported to a target shooting site. The prior art further fails to disclose a target throwing device having multiple throwing arms adaptable for throwing a variety of different targets including a control system which may be preset and controlled by the shooter to launch automatically a plurality of targets sequentially at predetermined intervals.